Word: firs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR. Like its Rockefeller Center neighbors -- a towering fir tree and a glistening ice rink that displays the endlessly watchable gyrations of amateur skaters -- this New York City bring- the-family pageant is one of the grandest holiday traditions in the U.S. Satisfyingly the same from year to year, yet spruced up just enough, the fast- moving script mingles Charles Dickens, Santa Claus and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker with carols and hymns. The climactic Nativity scene features camels, donkeys and other live animals. This year's production serves up dazzling special effects and opulent costumes...
...hillside. In Northern California, members of the group blocked a logging road, and a brief brawl broke out between loggers and protesters. Earth Firsters also took to the trees in Oregon, Montana and Colorado. Two protesters in Washington's Colville National Forest who had clambered up into adjoining Douglas fir trees were surprised when the loggers they planned to confront never showed up. Their "occupation" was cut short after 48 hours, but tree-sitter Tim Coleman vowed to "take to the trees again if necessary...
...Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres, less than originally thought but still an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. But the flames were dervish-like, capriciously carving jigsaw patterns out of untouched forest, sometimes encircled by heavily burned areas. Blackened stands of lodgepole pine and Douglas fir should gradually become meadows of aspens, wildflowers and grass; life will go on. "From an ecological standpoint, there was no downside," says John Varley, the park's chief of research. "It is not a rebirth because there was not a death...
...tons of cellulose fibers a year, and its effluent, discharged directed into the lake, has created a polluted zone 23 miles wide. Clouds of yellowish smoke belching from the factory's smokestacks have settled over 770 sq. mi. of Siberian wilderness and have killed an estimated 86,000 fir trees...
Such selective cutting, however, which allowed forests to regenerate species that had no commercial value as well as the highly prized Douglas fir, seemed too inefficient to the Government foresters. Now, perhaps too late, research has shown that clear-cuts tend to break an important ecological chain: they destroy the habitat of small mammals that shelter in forest undergrowth. These creatures eat and distribute mycorrhizal fungi, which grow among the rootlets of saplings and help the trees absorb water and nutrients. There may be enough spores of fungi in the soil after a clear-cut to start a second-growth...